In recent times it seems that Intel has well and truly stolen the limelight from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). Product release delays; less than stellar performance from their highly anticipated 65nm CPU's and a highly publicised cashflow crisis have all taken their toll on the manufacturer. Well it appears that AMD has had enough of playing second fiddle to Intel and this seems very much apparent from the new updates to AMD's server roadmap.

Shanghai

According to AMD their 45nm 'Shanghai' server processor is on schedule to begin production in the second half of 2008. Shanghai will feature coherent HyperTransport 3.0 communication. Level 3 cache will be increased from 2 mb to 6 mb and enhancements to core and instructions-per-clock have been made.

Istanbul

Istanbul is the newbie to AMD's updated server lineup and will feature a 6-core processor that will fit in the current Socket F1 (1207) which essentially extends the life of the current platform.

Socket G34

AMD's new Opteron processor socket G34 is planned for the first half of 2010 and will introduce features such as DDR3 capability and the AMD RD890 chipset for non-coherent HyperTransport 3.0, along with an additional HT link.

Furthermore, AMD will introduce two new server processors (6-core and 12-core respectively) to compliment the new G34 Socket. The 6-cored processor, codenamed 'Sao Paolo' will incorporate DDR3 functionality and HyperTransport 3.0 and a 6-core design. 'Magny Cours' will be the 12-core variant and will leverage the same features as Sao Paolo.